


until we’re dumb in the dark

by gingermaggie



Category: The Martian - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Missing Scene, just some very short fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-07
Updated: 2020-05-07
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:21:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24051241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gingermaggie/pseuds/gingermaggie
Summary: Mark’s email gets Beck thinking. And then he’s hanging out with Johanssen, and he kinda forgets to think.
Relationships: Chris Beck/Beth Johanssen
Comments: 5
Kudos: 49





	until we’re dumb in the dark

**Author's Note:**

> Fair warning, I fact checked almost none of this and certainly none of the science-adjacent stuff.
> 
> \---
> 
> Title from "I'm Ready" by AJR, because AJR trash for life.

It was quiet in the lab, mostly. There was the general background hum of the machinery that keeps a ginormous tin can hurtling through space with six—or, five, rather—over-evolved monkeys with an arguable death wish tumbling around inside. The soft clack of the keys under Johannsson's fingers as she ran diagnostic simulations. The shuffle of the samples Beck was swapping in and out of the microscope. It was a companionable silence. Easy. Warm. It had lit a spark in Beck's chest, made him feel foolish and giddy and sixteen, that Johanssen had trudged in and flopped into the seat by the lab's computer. 

"Vogel's using the big screen to load pictures of his kids," she'd said, already booting her login. "You mind?" 

She'd glanced at him like she actually wanted a response, even though they both knew he wouldn't try to tell her no and she wouldn't believe him if he did. 

"No, that's fine," he'd replied, dim and useless. "Uh, knock yourself out." 

She'd smiled, turning to hide her amusement, and he kicked himself internally, smacking his forehead with the heel of his hand, melodramatic, when she wasn't looking. 

_Knock yourself out? What am I, eighty?_

He was pleased, stupidly so, that she'd chosen to come to the lab when her preferred computer was unavailable. She could have gone anywhere. This aforementioned godforsaken tin can was absolutely lousy with computers. Vogel wouldn't have cared if she stuck around and used another terminal, or she could have gone to the bridge with Martinez and Lewis. Hell, if she wanted to be alone, she could have used the spare computer installed in the space by the bunks. But here she was, in the lab with him. 

Not that it was unusual, for them to hang out. They were all close, of course, the whole crew. They had to be, or else they'd have fucking killed each other months—years—ago. But Beck had always been especially drawn to Johanssen. Not just because she was—he didn't—just, because she was awesome. Funny and brilliant and humble and confident and clever and goofy and passionate and, frankly, adorable as hell. 

Beck wondered if Johanssen knew how pink her cheeks got when she got really fired up as she argued or debated or just infodumped hard about something she was passionate about. He wondered if she knew how it happened even if her target was a computer instead of a person. 

Beck wondered if Johanssen knew she hummed quietly when she was really focused. He could almost never quite make out the tunes themselves, but occasionally snatches caught his memory, enough for him to be convinced her selections ran the gamut from rap to musical theater to Top 40 hits. 

Beck wondered if Johanssen knew how often she ran a hand through her hair while she typed. Wondered if she knew it caught his eye every time he did and he got off kilter watching the gleam of her hair in the light. If she knew it sent a wave of scent into the air. If she knew she somehow made the standard-issue shampoo smell better than anyone else in the oft-cited tin can. 

Beck wondered if Johanssen knew— 

"Watney said I ought to buck up and tell you how I feel about you." 

The room didn't go completely silent, of course, because the machinery hum never goes away. It would be fucking catastrophic if it went away, so of course it was quite heartening that it didn't. Beck didn’t think that— 

Wait. 

Wait. Fuck. What did he just say? Did he just say that? 

He felt as frozen as any carbonite could have gotten him, but he made himself turn towards Johanssen anyway. She was still looking at her computer. 

Still looking at her computer. 

Her typing had stopped but she was still looking at her—maybe she didn't hear him? 

"Huh," she said, steady but without giving anything away. She twisted her chair and faced him. "Watney said?" 

She hadn't left or thrown anything at him yet. So far so good. 

"Yeah," Beck said. "In those one-on-one emails he sent?" 

"Huh," she said again. And then, after a moment, "He just told me I was a nerd." 

Beck had to tamp down an instinctive bristle on her behalf before he realized that Mark wasn't wrong, she was _such_ a fucking nerd, that was part of what made her so amazing. But Johanssen pressed on. "And that Lewis said if any of you hit on me, she'd rain hell." 

Beck snorted. "Yeah, she was—" he sobered suddenly. "Yeah." He'd sort of forgotten what they were talking about. Johanssen had that kind of effect on him sometimes. The kind where everything fell away but her and how nice it was to hang out and shoot the shit. 

"So, Mark knows how you feel about me," Johanssen said, and she was looking more at his slides, abandoned on the lab table, than at him. 

"I—yeah," Beck finally said. He didn't really know what else there was to say. 

Now her gaze locked back to his. 

"So how do you feel about me?" 

Warmth and terror curled their way through Beck's body. He answered as honestly as he could. "Ways that would probably earn me a kick in the balls if I told you." 

Johanssen quirked a smile before returning to neutrality. Her foot scuffed against the floor, casual, but she used its new reach to scoot her chair slightly—so slightly—towards his table. 

"And yet he advised disclosure," she noted. Another centimeter forward. 

Beck's heart was racing. Tentatively he leaned forward in his own chair, let it slide towards her infinitesimally, experimentally. 

"Guess all that time on Mars got him thinking life's kinda short, huh?" he said. 

"Guess so," she agreed. Her eyes were so clear. Geez, staring at her was like shooting too much oxygen straight to his brain. 

"He did tell me to wait until the mission was over," Beck admitted. 

"Good job on that one," she said, another smile playing at the edge of her mouth. They were still inching toward each other. 

"Yeah, well," he said, half a grumble, but there was this eager hope beating in his chest. "He of all people should know that life can get shorter any second." 

"Smooth," Johanssen said, and Beck couldn't help a cocky sort of half shrug. "Have you ever read 'To His Coy Mistress'?" 

Beck's face scrunched as he thought. "Uh—I don't think so?" 

Johanssen nodded. "It's an old poem," she says. "Andrew Marvell. There's a similar vibe. Heavy themes of _we all die eventually, so we might as well—_ well, you can connect the dots." 

She smiled a little wickedly, and it did some short-circuiting type things to Beck's brain. His mouth was dry. 

As Beck slid forward one last tiny bit, he found himself with nowhere left to go. His chair bumped Johannsen's. She was right there. 

"You never answered the question," Johanssen said, quiet, on a breath, but he could hear her fine, at this distance. Her eyes were a strange blend of soft intensity. Spots of pink colored her cheeks, and she blinked, but she didn't back down. 

Beck, on the other hand, still felt like he was melting. His gaze kept falling on her lips. She bit the bottom one as he was watching, a nervous tic, and he didn't think she was trying to kill him, but she might manage it anyway. 

"I—what?" he asked, because he definitely lost the thread again. 

She tucked her hair behind her ear, and he got a whiff of standard-issue shampoo. 

"How do you feel about me?" she asked, insistent. 

_How do I feel about her?_

He found himself basically overwhelmed by the insanity of the question. He didn’t know how to begin to answer it in any way that— 

_How do I_ feel _about_ _—_

"I— _Beth,"_ he said, useless and desperate and packed full of emotion, and suddenly they were kissing, pressed close together, holding on for dear life. They were kissing, and Beck couldn’t believe this was working out for him, and he sent a thought of gratitude across the expanse of space, back to Mars, to Mark. 

_Holy shit,_ _you_ _dumbass, you were right. I would have regretted losing this._

**Author's Note:**

> I saw The Martian years ago and loved it, and I finally got around to reading the book the other day and got super fixated on it, and perhaps especially on Beck/Johanssen. Thus, this, written over the course of a few hours around 2:00-4:00 a.m. It's canon compliant for both the book and the movie--though the movie (as far as I remember) never mentions the emails Watney sends the rest of the gang, it never says they _don't_ exist either! Basically, I started thinking about how we know that Mark knew Beck had a crush on Johanssen, and that they're together by the time they rescue Watney. It left me wondering whether Watney just didn't know they'd already gotten together, or whether his message really helped Beck get his shit together, or whatever else. So I wrote about it.
> 
> Your typical gingermaggie research breakdown: I didn't look up any real science they could be doing. I didn't double check what kind of terminology they had for computers and login profiles and parts of the ship in the book. My greatest effort went into trying to remember the name of "To His Coy Mistress," utterly betraying my English major roots by completely blanking on everything about it except the vibe but totally winning by accidentally making it a pillar (to me, maybe not to you) of a barely 1k fic about The Martian and finally finding it based on the Google query "old seduction poem" ("poem about how life is short so we should have sex" didn't work, oddly).
> 
> I'm [@romansuzume](https://romansuzume.tumblr.com) on Tumblr and [@gingermaggiest](https://twitter.com/gingermaggiest) on Twitter! Come hang out!


End file.
